Difference between intel(R) core 2 and Pentium(R)M Processor

[orllybay]

Hello,
difference between intel(R) core 2 and Pentium(R)M Processor

 

[jaguarskx]

Pentium M was released back in 2003 and was primarily for laptops. It is a single core CPU that was great back then. I have one in my IBM ThinkPad T40. It was good enough for multi-tasking back then but not anymore since current programs (like web browsers) need a bit more processing power now compared to back then.

Core 2 Duos and Quads were released back in mid 2006 and it was a major step forward for Intel. They are still very capable CPUs even to this day and are comparable to some of the AMD's current / recently discontinued CPUs. For example, my Core 2 Quad Q9450 (released in 2008) is comparable to an AMD Phenom II X4 955 (discontinued) and likely matches up pretty well with AMD's current FX-6100 CPU.

 

[13thmonkey]

in fact weren't the core 2's an evolution of the pentium M series and not of the pentium 4 series which might have looked like the natural predecessor.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Early on in the release the Intel® Pentium® 4 it became clear that the Intel NetBurst® microarchitecture was not going to adapt well to the laptop environment. We started to looking into a new microarchetecture for laptops which would lead to the Intel Pentium M processors. Once these were released we started to hear that in they were performing better than so desktop processors with a much higher clock speed.

In time the Intel Pentium M archetecture would like the Intel Core® Duo processors (which would be mobile only) and then the release of the Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

I guess you could say that the Intel Core 2 Duo was due to a burned lap from an Intel Pentium 4 processor in a laptop. 😀


Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[jaguarskx]

Yeah, Core 2 is more directly related to the Pentium M than the Pentium 4.

The Pentium M was basically a Pentium 3 core with some added features of the Pentium 4, but thankfully not the extremely long pipelines. The Pentium M actually performed very well against the Athlon XP, so much so that I remember reading a lot of posts hoping that Intel would release a desktop version (which would mean higher clock speed) and of course a desktop motherboard for it. There was only one or two motherboards released for the Pentium M and of course a desktop version of the Pentium M never appeared.

If Intel had released the Pentium M instead of the Pentium 4, Intel probably would not have lost their performance crown to AMD's Athlon XP. I was impressed how well the Pentium M 1.5GHz in my ThinkPad T40 performed compared to my Athlon XP 2600+ OCed to 2.3GHz.

Kudos to that little Israeli team that developed the Pentium M for the laptop market.